Prof Kumar had about a month with us of lectures. He covered mostly H2 Biology plant-related mechanisms, and his lab tutorials mostly involved teaching us how to read, interpret and understand scientific journals and data. Just make sure you’re quiet during his lectures. As others have mentioned, he will not speak if you do, and he will single you out and ask you to leave if you’re just perpetually talking (yes, this includes whispering in an obvious manner). His lectures are rather interesting as he explains the mechanisms carefully and links concepts together. The CA for plants is easy enough if you prepare yourself, nothing too difficult. He did ask some questions regarding the papers given during the tutorial sessions, so take that into account too.
Prof Ip is very enthusiastic in teaching and wants you to understand concepts, though he has a lot of things to cover in a short amount of time. He starts off by explaining his pedagogy and why he speaks so quickly during lectures (quickly relative to other lecturers, at least). It can get quite annoying when he continuously re-emphasises his pedagogy during lecture, but otherwise his enthusiasm and the lilt of his voice makes it difficult not to pay attention. He also knows when to insert videos during the lecture. A note though: if you wan to save on the cost of printing, you have to be selective on what you print out, because his pdfs include a TON of one-sentence slides and slides which are essentially blank due to the embedded videos. He will reply very promptly to emails, and he will forward reminders and interesting questions to the entire cohort on an almost-daily basis, so prepare for a little bit of (mostly very interesting) spam. These emails are not essential to the final exam, but help with the understanding of the content.
Head over to our Shop for more module content!
